zdl_cryptofandomcom-20200214-history
Cosmos (ATOM)
Basics * Created by Tendermint * A network of distributed ledgers “Building a Network of Blockchains” * Platform * Launched 4-2019. * " Is well underway (30-4-2019) with the launch of Lunie, Cosmos’ native crypto wallet application." Token * Has Atoms, which are used to pay the gas fee. * From this blog (27-4-2019): "Users pay gas fee in “atom” (the native token of Cosmos). 2% of the gas fee flows to a reserve pool. The fund accumulated in the pool is saved for system upgrades and is determined by the Cosmos governance system. The rest of the gas fee, together with newly minted atom tokens in each block, is distributed to validators in proportion to the percentage of atom tokens they stake in the system. The more atom tokens staked, the higher reward received. Validators run full nodes and secure the Cosmos network by collecting, assembling and broadcasting transactions according to the Tendermint consensus protocol. Cosmos sets atom token inflation rate between 7–20%. High inflation rate, i.e. high block rewards, dilutes the wealth of the atom token holders who do not stake their tokens and thus incentivizes them to stake their tokens in the system. The inflation rate is automatically adjusted so that the percentage of staked token attains the target of 66.7%. Specifically, when the staking ratio is lower than the target, the inflation rate is raised so that atom token holders are more encouraged to stake their tokens. Vice versa." Tech BPoS * Uses a Bonded Proof-of-Stake protocol (BPoS). * "In Bonded Proof-of-Stake protocols (BPoS) such as Cosmos or IRISnet, both the validator and its delegators are directly punished.” As noted in Bakerz blog, slashing can occur in cases where there’s a “liveness fault” detected on Cosmos or IRISnet. This occurs when the “validator node does not participate in the network consensus for a long time and misses several blocks.” * “In some protocols,” Bakerz noted, the “validator can also be jailed, a process prohibiting them from re-entering the networks for a certain period of time.” Meanwhile, in BPoS) protocols such as Cosmos and IRISnet, the “delegators are also at risk of punishment,” so POS Bakerz recommended that users “carefully choose their validator.” Staking * From this blog (27-4-2019): "The system starts with 100 validators and targets 300 validators in 10 years. Those who stake the most atom tokens in the system become validators. Those whose staked atom tokens are outnumbered by new entrants, lose their validator status, a.k.a. Liquid PoS. Apart from their self-staked atom tokens, validators could also offer staking service to atom token holders and attract their delegated atom tokens. In other words, atom token holders could delegate their tokens to validators and share gas revenue and block rewards with validators without running a full node. In return, validators could charge a certain commission for the staking service." Blockchain States * From this piece describing the difference between Cosmos and Polkadot (27-4-2019). On blockchain states: "In the Cosmos Network, instead of using a local/global model for security, every blockchain is independent and secures itself. Each blockchain runs its own consensus and the validators of each blockchain are responsible for securing that blockchain alone. The network uses a hub-and-zone model for interoperability, where zones (independent blockchains) can “send tokens” to other zones by routing through a hub (also an independent blockchain). This protocol is called the IBC (Inter-Blockchain Communication), which is a protocol for sending messages between chains to represent token transfers. The IBC protocol is a work in progress, starting with token transfers and eventually any type of message passing between blockchains." and on the consensus mechanism; "each blockchain in the Cosmos Network can use any consensus algorithm that adheres to a certain specification known as the ABCIspec. This specification is created to standardize communication between chains. Right now, only the Tendermint algorithm fits this spec, but there are other efforts to create other consensus algorithms that fit this specification. At a high-level, the Tendermint algorithm works by having every validator talk to each other to approve/reject any single block, creating finality on a per-block level. The algorithm is fast and has been stress-tested in a live environment with 200 validators and 6-second block times during Game of Stakes. The Cosmos team also provides a software development kit with the Tendermint algorithm being usable out-of-the-box. This blog post is a good primer on consensus algorithms, and the features of Tendermint that make it useful. The biggest downside of Tendermint is that it has a high communication overhead between validators. This means that while it could work fairly fast with ~200 validators, it will be much slower with 2000 validators. However, the trade-off here is that you get safety in asynchrony. This means that in a network partition, instead of having 2 different histories of transactions which will eventually merge (and 1 history will get discarded in the process), the network will halt instead. This is important because if you see a transaction that is “finalized”, it will never be reversed even in the worst network conditions." Governance * The “percentage of voting rights” retained by the “top 10 block producers (BPs)” on Cosmos stands at 57.3% (as of 13-4-2019). And the top 20 validators own more than 70% of the voting power (27-4-2019) * From this piece (27-4-2019): The Cosmos Network has no fixed rules of membership — anyone can build a hub or a zone. Hubs are themselves sovereign blockchains built with the intention of connecting a bunch of other blockchains. Two examples are the Cosmos Hub, which was recently launched by the Tendermint team, and the Iris Hub, a Hub that plans to connect blockchains which primarily operate in China and other parts of Asia. This hub-and-zone model makes inter-chain communication more efficient, because instead of connecting to every other blockchain, each blockchain only needs to connect to a hub."'' "there is no single “governance” process for the Cosmos Network. Each hub and zone has its own governance processes and there is no central set of rules that apply to the entire network of blockchains. When people talk about “governance of Cosmos”, they are referring to is the governance of the Cosmos Hub, the blockchain launched by the Tendermint team. The Cosmos Hub has a set of rules that lets anyone send a text proposal, and Atom holders are allowed to vote on it, where their votes are weighted by the number of Atoms they own. This is an example of what a proposal looks like. To learn more about the intricacies of the governance process, this blog post by Chorus One is a good primer on the governance of the Cosmos Hub." * From this blog (27-4-2019): "Validators are required to vote on all proposals. Failing to do so in a timely manner will invoke a temporary suspension of the validator identity for one week. The on-chain governance system of Cosmos can be divided into three phases: Phase 1: Proposing Anyone could submit proposals to the voting system. To enter the voting phase, the proposal needs to attract a minimum deposit from the proposer or other atom token holders. Phase 1 lasts maximally two weeks. Phase 2: Voting Atom token holders gain voting power by staking tokens in the system. The voting power is proportional to the number of staked tokens. Voters have five options: Yea, Yea with Force, Nay, Nay with Force and Abstain. Token delegators could cast their own votes. Otherwise, they automatically inherit the delegatee’s vote (a.k.a. liquid democracy). Phase 2 lasts two weeks. Phase 3: Tallying A proposal is considered passed if and only if the following two criteria are both satisfied: # More than half of the voting tokens have voted Yea and Yea with Force # Less than one third of the voting tokens have voted Nay with Force The deposit staked in the proposal will be confiscated to the reserve pool if the majority of voters consider it as a spamming proposal. Otherwise, it will be returned to the original owners. Successful proposals will be implemented by validators." Hard Fork after critical bug * On 28th May 2019 "a critical security vulnerability in the CosmosSDK was reported to the Tendermint team through security@tendermint.com. In response to this issue, we are currently coordinating a hard fork to upgrade the Cosmos mainnet, and we are reaching out to validators to ensure that they are available to respond during the network transition at block height 482100.” Difference with Polkadot ' * Substrate vs Cosmos SDK, from this piece (27-4-2019) "Both Polkadot and Cosmos offer a software development kit, called Substrate and the Cosmos SDK respectively. They are both intended to make it easy for developers to start building their own chains, and include various modules out-of-the-box, such as governance modules (voting systems), staking modules, authentication modules, and so on. The main difference between the two is that the Cosmos SDK supports Go, whereas Substrate supports any language that compiles to WASM (Web Assembly), giving more flexibility to developers." * "In conclusion, (...) the biggest advantages of Polkadot over Cosmos are the following: # Application developers do not need to bootstrap their own security # If they can solve data availability, interchain messaging under shared security is easier # They seem to be more ambitious with Substrate (WASM, more consensus algorithms & modules out-of-the-box) # Focus on arbitrary message passing better for cross-parachain contract calls. (Still unsure of use case today) # Seems to have more developers building version 1.0 Conversely, the advantages of Cosmos compared to Polkadot are the following: # Cosmos is live. Polkadot is not. (27-4-2019) # Polkadot has a restrictive & possibly expensive parachain membership process # More customizability is better for specific projects (e.g, Binance) # Evil validators of parachains could spread corruption throughout entire network. Cosmos restricts corruption to only within the zone & corresponding assets # Cosmos SDK used by many projects already # Focus on asset transfers simpler & easier to get right. Proven use case today." * Another comparison between the two projects can be found on the Cosmos forum. Stakers * Stake.fish is a Staker Pro's and Con's Con's * Very high inflation rate * From this blog (27-4-2019): "Staking period (21 days) is way too short. Speculators could vote for proposals that are in favor of short-run interests. The current voting design does not scale as the system grows. As the ecosystem grows, proposals on different topics will be initiated more frequently. It is neither efficient nor fair to require all validators to vote on every proposal. The voting design is susceptible to ambushes at the end of the voting period." Team, etc. Team * Many of the team members are said to be sort of closet Bitcoin maximalists. Jae Kwon, the founder of Tendermint has a twitter account called @BitcoinJaesus. * Zaki Manian, director of Tendermint Labs * Awa Sun Yin; researcher at Cosmos (co-founder at Cryptium Labs) * Christopher Goes; a protocol developer & researcher at Tendermint/Cosmos (co-founder at Cryptium Labs) * Chjango Unchained; Architect of the Cosmos community Partners * Is a founding member of the ECF * As of 7-2019 on the partner & clients list of ZeppelinOS. Investors * Gets it's funding from it's curator Interchain Category:Companies/Organisations